I used to see guys who were on the street and homeless, and I just never, you know, fathomed that it could be me one day. I just never pictured it. And I just didn't prepare myself. And it happened. --Alonzo, panhandling outside CVS in Lincoln Park This is the ninth in a series of excerpts from my oral history, Of No Fixed Address: A Collection of Voices from the Streets of Chicago . Read more about the project here. THE CURSE OF THE IRISH It is a cold, gray February afterno